Robert Benchley Quotes

The mistake we make with many people is that we assume that we have the model. It is a type of condescension.

One always likes to think that other countries are not like one's own.

The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason.

Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least resistance, we ascribe to them collective crimes, collective acts and opinions. "The Serbs have massacred…", "The English have devastated…", "The Jews have confiscated…", "The Blacks have torched", "The Arabs refuse…". We blithely express sweeping judgments on whole peoples, calling them "hardworking" and "ingenious", or "lazy", "touchy", "sly", "proud", or "obstinate". And sometimes this ends in bloodshed." – Amin Maalouf "On Identity

People have prejudices against a nation in which they have no acquaintances.

I saw a monkey walking on a leash and thought it was an ugly foreign child.

If a foreign country doesn't look like a middle-class suburb of Dallas or Detroit, then obviously the natives must be dangerous as well as badly dressed.

Someone asked me years ago if it were true that I disliked Jews, and I replied that it was certainly true, not at all because they are Jews but because they are folks, and I don't like folks.

Social distance makes it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our own.

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation, or a distinct group by its least worthy members.

... a fixed obsession on Anglo-Saxon superiority.

I think comedy is incredibly discriminated against. It is one of the most enjoyed yet most condescended art forms in the world. It's the same thing with hip-hop.

I shouldn't say it, but I found that the French can be the most arrogant people in the world if they want to be.

People say they don't want to call a call-centre in India. Why not? They're doing the same job - you just don't like Indians.

People in Hollywood can condescend to the way a lot of other people are living.

We judge people based on their clothes, social class, and, dare I say, ethnicity. Our comedians make light of these stereotypes regularly, and we laugh at their accuracy.

Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.

People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they're African American. They're not us. They're impostors.

We cannot bring ourselves to believe it possible that a foreigner should in any respect be wiser than ourselves. If any such point out to us our follies, we at once claim those follies as the special evidence of our wisdom.

Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

We white people think that we know everything.

People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can.

Prejudices subsist in people's imagination long after they have been destroyed by their experience.

All people who have reached the point of becoming nations tend to despise foreigners, but there is not much doubt that the English-speaking races are the worst offenders. One can see this from the fact that as soon as they become fully aware of any foreign race they invent an insulting nickname for it.

One thing I do know, you can't change hatred by showing those people that they're wrong about us.